Current Packers See Good, Bad In Playing 90 Years Ago

With the Green Bay Packers celebrating the franchise's 90th birthday this week, Packers.com asked a handful of current players what they would have liked or disliked about playing professional football 90 years ago.

They found plenty to talk about on both sides of that coin.

"The brutality of it was probably a positive and a negative," linebacker Brady Poppinga said. "The purity of the game, it was as pure as it can be. Guys played the game and didn't worry about being famous. The integrity of the game was really pure at that time.

"But it was a violent sport."

And the equipment, or lack thereof, back then did little to curb the violence.

"No facemasks, leather helmets, very little or no pads," rookie linebacker Clay Matthews said. "Physically it was a very violent and brutal game. We've made tremendous leaps in today's age, and it's still a violent and brutal sport.